Manfred Lachs North America (the North American Regional Competition) is held annually in Washington, DC. on a Friday and Saturday at the end of March or the first weekend of April. The Competition is judged by experts in the field of space law and provides an opportunity for student teams to meet many of those judges after the competition is over.
The Regional Competition selects the winning team that will be funded to travel to the International Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition.
The Lachs Moot Calendar, available on the Lachs Moot main page, will have the entire schedule for the year.
The North American Regional Competition also welcomes teams from Latin American and Caribbean countries.
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2019 Manfred Lachs North America Registration |
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2018 Supplemental Rules for North America (2018 edition applies in 2019) |
Calendar 2019
Resources
Further information and resources about the competition in general can be found on the resources page.
IISL Young Scholars Awards
The IISL Young Scholars Fund was created in 2011 to support the achievements of students participating in each of the four Regional Rounds of the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition. The Fund grants monetary awards in the following categories:
- Winning Team: 200 Euros
- Team with the Best Memorials: 125 Euros
- Best Oralist of the Regional Round: 100 Euros
The Young Scholars Fund has been formed and is largely maintained by donations from IISL members, to honor the very significant achievement of these students.
Contact
Mr. Nathan Johnson, JD, LLM
Regional Organizer
[email protected]
2018 North American Competitors (At Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC) |
 2015 North American & World Champions |
Experiences
2018 North American Champions: Louisiana State University
Participating in the 2018 Manfred Lachs competition was without a doubt the highlight of my law school experience. Being a new team going into the North American regional round, we went into the competition with no expectations. Now that my team has finished our run, we feel blown away by how rewarding the Lachs competition actually was. Getting to argue in front of subject matter experts—literally the people who wrote the books you cited in your memorial—is not something you get to do every day. At the international rounds in Germany, we had the fortune of meeting three sitting ICJ judges, and we even were able to have dinner with them at the IISL awards banquet! I sat one seat away from Judge Gevorgian and had a friendly chat with Vice President Xue. All of this took place within the context of having access to the International Astronautical Congress, the largest annual space conference in the world.
My team feels very grateful for the outstanding experience we have had in the Lachs competition. As our coaches will tell you, this competition is special in the level of access it gives you to experts in the field and the opportunities it provides. Above all, the best part of the Lachs competition is its inclusiveness and fairness. This was LSU’s first time competing in Lachs, and LSU Law does not have any space law experts laying around. With a lot of hard work, using general international law as our bedrock, my team was able to win the regional round as a first-year team. To me, this is symbolic of the field of space law: freedom of access for all teams, regardless of economic or scientific development. If you are motivated enough to invest in the competition, Lachs promises to be an incredible experience.
Zach Miller, LSU Law Center
Read about the experiences (in Spanish) of the team from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma